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Champions Online Interviews: Bill Roper Interview
MMORPG.com's Dana Massey recently traveled to the Cryptic Studios offices and spoke with Champions Online's Bill Roper about the game, its launch and its future direction.
By Dana Massey on December 07, 2009
Champions Online has been on the market for three months, and during our recent trip down to Cryptic HQ in Los Gatos, CA we spoke to Design Director Bill Roper about the game's launch, and where it stands today.
Nemesis Confrontation was the game's most recent big push, which the developers hoped would make each player's created enemy a bigger part of their life. It includes a five man end-game mission where the player is captured by a Nemesis and locked in a super prison. The five man dungeon includes an encounter with a nemesis for each person in the instance as you try to break out. Finally, as you uncover who is behind it (and no, I won't toss in the spoiler!) there is an epic battle on a changing battlefield that Roper was quite excited about.
Along with that update, which dropped in late November, they did a baseline patch that included a lot of balance fixes. Archery got a lot of attention, including a new power - Snapshot - that roper said "addresses a hole."
Along with that came new free costumes. Cape mantles now let people wear capes with more chest pieces. Before, the geometry would collide on the bulkier pieces. A mantle lets the player offset the cape enough to wear it in more circumstances. They also added more glow effects, more weapon aesthetic pieces, new leg attachments and, Roper's personal favorite, an acoustic and electric guitar piece for the back. There's even a brain in a jar helmet and all of these updates were added to the game for free, not exclusively to the Champions Store as some have feared may be the case with all such items.
That doesn't mean the store was ignored, of course. Based on fan feedback, Roper said they added packages of high-end items cosmetic items for sale.
In December's event, players will get to fight the Nemesis of a well known NPC.
"There is a character in Millennium City who players know," explained Roper. He has a very nasty, iconic nemesis and players might not expect it. The NPC is the Toymaker, but no word yet on the villain. Nonetheless, it's not hard to read the holiday event overtones into that one.
Rewinding, Roper took some time to look back at launch and gave us a candid look at where he felt they went right and wrong.
"When the game came out, it was trivial, easy... broken easy," he told us. It looked terrible. They had the holes fixed during the head-start, but to those who were in early it looked like a "nerf nuke," in his words. The optics were terrible, but they had no choice but to plug the holes. Fast. One player hit the level cap in 22 hours, he mentioned.
Part of this was caused by the company's own mistakes in Beta. By Roper's own admission, they simply did not gather enough data from their players on the experience curve of the game. They also just didn't let enough people in. Both of these are lessons that they hope to remedy for Star Trek Online.
Power balance was another hole at launch that Roper specifically highlighted.
"The first initial big shifts we had to do happened on day one," he mentioned and believes they've knocked down "the really egregious ones."
The shifts in balance and depth to the game also uncovered some nasty holes. At launch there were big gaps of content, specifically in the early 30s and 18 to 21 range.
All that said, Roper was quite pleased with the effort his team has gone through to address those holes quickly. In just three months they've added a lot to the game. He told us that "the amount of stuff constantly blows me away."
He also felt the game launched well from a technological point of view. There were only two major outages.
The first was simple human error from an unfortunate new employee. One line of code in an obscure place got checked in and while it was a very simple fix, it took them eight hours to track it down and solve it. They gave everyone who lived through that outage Dr. Newbton action figures, which Roper confessed do look a bit like the person responsible for the bug.
The second big issue was in the transaction database, which caused people to lose an hour. Beyond that, though, he didn't think the game did poorly. There were not many, in a broader sense, reports of crashes and other major problems people have come to associate with MMO launches.
Looking to the future, Roper is focused on "systemic things" that will help people enjoy content they have in new ways, as well as more standard new content. An early example of this is Crossover Missions.
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"It lets anybody just go on a mission with anybody," he said simply. This system scales encounters and rewards to each individual person in a group. Thus, if a low level character wants to hang out with his higher level friend, he'll be able to take part in the encounter, give a meaningful contribution and get out a meaningful reward for his efforts.
They've also been pleased with the interaction between Champions and Star Trek Online. He gave two concrete examples. In the first, Champions got positional shields for launch because they were coded for Star Trek's ship combat. It was easy for them to grab them and make them a neat part of the Champions experience. The second is sliding doors. Obviously, it's an iconic part of the Star Trek experience to hear a door woosh open but in the build of STO I played, doors served as transition points (click, then loading screen) with no wooshing. However, someone found some old code for that and soon both games should have that ability.
While Champions Online didn't shatter sales numbers, Roper believes it has done more than enough to have a very solid future.
"The biggest challenge any MMO faces is that they're not games, they're life styles," he explained. That means they need to unseat people from a lifestyle and convince them, and their friends, that this new one is better. It takes work.
To him, the best indicator is retention. Their launch retention was within the projected parameters - no matter how much I asked, he wouldn't say what those were - and has consistently improved since launch. Blood Moon, for example, had better conversion of free time to subscribers than they originally anticipated.
I try most mmorpgs that come out. I level a while in each, take some screenshots, explore, report back what I know in conversation with other players. That, I guess, is why my opinion counts, perhaps, in this discussion, even though I haven’t even played Champions Online yet, and have no clue about its specifics.
Not knowing anything specific about Champions Online game play, I hope Cryptic Studios and the players are doing well. I’d be thinking about going out and getting Champions Online right now if it weren’t for the snag described below.
I’m writing a negative post, but really I wish everyone involved with Champions Online well.
I’m baffled as to why Cryptic used Bill Roper as a face of Champions Online. It makes me, my friends, and anyone like me, cringe.
Sure, his resume in gaming looks fantastic before Hellgate: London, but that was when he was surrounded by correcting influences that kept him from wrecking havoc. When he ended up at the top of a project with free reign, it was a disaster. Not only that, but he went beyond making mistakes, to acting in a dishonest, malicious manner toward his business partners and his players while at Flagship Studios working on Hellgate: London.
Believe me, I wouldn’t write if his history didn’t make a person who’s played Hellgate: London jump out of his seat and reach for a baseball bat when seeing his face.
Putting him in charge of anything is like taking Hitler or Stalin and saying “Oh well, he screwed up kinda, but everyone makes mistakes, let’s put him in charge again, I’m sure he’ll do better this time.”
I know how melodramatic that sounds. I realize it sounds like exaggeration and drama inappropriate for ‘just a game’ or ‘just games’, but my gosh, if you followed his business practices at Flagship Studios you’d vomit.
I’ll be super (bad pun) glad if people are having fun and Champions Online is working out, but man, it’ll take a lot of convincing for people who know Bill to ever touch Champions Online.
In fairness to Mr Roper CO's problems began before his involvement in the project. Nemesis encounter encapsulates issues that were acute during alpha phases of this game and that were extensively discussed throughout the beta.
What is evident is a frighteningly superficial approach to content design and total lack of conviction in the core theme - this time squandering a feature that really should be defining ongoing player involvement and interaction. Instead it sidelines any shred of player investment in order to promote yet another bland generic npc cull and more of the same few identical quest mechanics that you have been forced to use to 'resolve' every other mission/quest/event that the game has thrown-up all over you.
The game desperately needs an infusion of imagination and a re-evaluation of its core objectives.
One of the basic problems of CO - and STO - is: no one knows it. Whereever in German game communites I go and tell about CO (or STO) practically everyone asks me "what the heck is Champions Online?" They have a really bad PR managment, and with STO they make it no better.
this game went to hell fast, they removed anything that made a character feel like a super hero and now is just a weak version of WoW spandex edition. They completly ruined anything fun in this game, what little there was.
Interview? More like PR piece.
"By Roper's own admission, they simply did not gather enough data from their players on the experience curve of the game. They also just didn't let enough people in. Both of these are lessons that they hope to remedy for Star Trek Online."
I've got several guildmates who have admitted to being in the beta. They all disappear to a locked Ventrilo room twice a week for about 3 hours a stretch. When asked, they "just can't talk about it." If STO is really only testing twice a week, then I'm doubting that Cryptic is able to get much more data from those testers. Twice a week. Open beta in less than 6... and then there's holidays or some-such. I think Cryptic is going to blow this one. All I can say is that they please need to keep Roper as far away from STO as possible. Let him go down with the sinking ship that is Champions.
The "Dr. Newbton" thing sounded more like scapegoating than an admission that there are obviously some major issues in the QA testing of Champions' patches. I didn't have a lot of respect for Mr. Roper prior to this article and I have even less now.
(edit for my poor spelling!)
Sounds like the future of STO to be honest.
It seems to me that Cryptic squandered all of their imagination and ability while making City of Heroes/Villains (though I do like that game very much, it has its problems, but overall I think it's a solid title.) Or maybe Cryptic has become the same type of mindless corporate profit whore that simply doesn't have the imagination and artistic ability to make good games.
Bill Roper should not be in charge of dressing himself, never mind a multi-million dollar MMOG project... I weep for STO, I really hope it turns out to be more than it is looking like now, but as much as I want it and CO to succeed and as much as I wanted to love and play CO and play STO I am very wary about putting time and money into anything Roper is involved with in any sort of leadership capacity.
That part left a bad taste in my mouth. I wouldn't want to work for Cryptic if they did things like that to me.
Bill should be the guy who they send out for coffee and snacks during late night worktime, not the guy in charge.
Good luck to anyone who plans on playing anything he is involved with, you will need it.
I think Bill is a bit optimistic about everything regarding this game. My personal opinion is that he should start putting together a new resume in another area of interest. Games just don't seem to be his thing. He's kidding himself if he doesn't realize the ship is sinking.
Bill's right about MMOs fitting into a person's lifestyle. I want to tell him very simply why I'm not playing this superhero game, even though I love superheroes and videogames. It's the business model, cut and dry. I simply refuse to pay a subscription fee and be encouraged to pay extra cash for online items, especially when they give me a performance advantage. This simply doesn't fit into my chosen lifestyle.
Also, when companies market their subscription plus RMT model, they almost always say that they are responding to "player feedback."
Let's be honest Bill, your company wants the additional revenue from RMT items. You know that making them both cosmetic and performance enhancing will generate more dollars. If you want people to spend more in the RMT store, you just make the ingame options a real pain in the ass--either too difficult, too long, or too repetitive.
What percentage of the playerbase is begging you to charge them more money for ingame items? I'll bet it's very, very small. I also bet you'd take one request for RMT from one impatient player, and put it on a billboard to justify the business model you chose before the game even went live.
Let's cut the crap and just call it like it is. The model is for your quarterly revenue charts, not for entertainment value, and you did not choose it based on player feedback; that's why I've chosen not to play.
Also, if you choose to charge me multiple layers of fees (subscrition plus performance enhancing RMT) for Star Trek, I'll give that one as pass as well. I also took note of how you handled RMT respecs in Champions, and didn't like the way that went down. I think you guys are putting short term revenue ahead of long-term loyalty, retention, reputation and long-term revenue. I think it's going to bite you. I think it already has.
"To him, the best indicator is retention. Their launch retention was within the projected parameters"
- So, they were shooting for a 7% retention rate?
I'd also like to point out that 86.4% of all statistics are completely made up.
Bill Roper, has anyone ever told you you look like KG from Tenacious D with a wig on? Just asking...cause if that's really you KG, I'd just stick with the awesome music. Your game-making skills are lacking.
The article really doesn't say much about what's going on in CO. Let's put it this way, I just canceled and basically waiting for the time to run out. CO has many issues with it at the moment.
The Good.
1. Character Creator - simply excellent; I spent hours just building toons that never saw any game-time at all.
2. Game Concept / game Play - Quite a good idea but when you take a step back, I suppose it's the same as COH/COX; at least that's what people keep saying.
3. Dev team - I have to give kudos to these guys. They really do try to listen and then implement the suggestions and make changes for the good.
The Bad.
1. Technical - It is likely that some will flame me for this but...this is a mess with CO right now. Issues range from connection to servers, patcher crashes, server crashes (longest was 9 hours without anyone at CO even knowing that it had crashed) lag/latency, rubber-banding, sudden disconnects etc; There has been a lot of people with the same issues scattered worldwide but it seems that all anyone can come up with is the usual "It's your ISP". Admittedly this answer did not come from the devs for everyone but it's the general response from those who can play without issues. I would have thought that the basic principle for a service orientated business should be "Let's secure customers first" and not just retention. Kinda hard to retain anything/anyone when your customers are having problems just accessing your service.
2. Powers - This is a total mess too. Not that the powers aren't working, just that there is no balance. The initial nerfs that came out were just wild swings. The recent archery changes showed a more focused look at balancing and fleshing out the powers instead of just nerfing everything.
3. Content - Sorely lacking. Literally a linear progressing in terms of how you level up. I've leveled 2 toons to 40 and 1 to the 30s and 2 more to the 20s, all doing the same identical quests simply because there is no other alternative aside from grinding out mobs.
4. Crafting - No reason to do it at all other than to say you did it.
5. Items - gear drops are basically not of much use aside from adding stats. The power replacers are essentially just for you to take screen shots and throw away.
Bill may want Co to stay around for a long time but unless they take a serious look at whether or not the cause of the technical issues are all actually on the customer side, it may be just a pipe dream for him. After all, how are you going to keep a game in the market if people can't even play it. Or at the very least insufficient people subscribe enough to maintain your overheads.
The sad thing is that I REALLY enjoyed the feel and art style for this game. Just a shame that there was almost no depth or balance.
I wouldn't mind seeing the skill charge system used in some other MMOs though, it added a bit of variety allowing them to have multiple effects.
I've tried all the free trials that have come out, and I want to like it, but I never even finish the trials. I make lots of toons, no interest in actually taking them into the game beyond the first couple I did.
The heavy instancing, the lack of player villains, even the way the Nemesis scenario was described in the article all make it feel like a standalone-game-with-multiplayer, rather than a true MMO for my tastes.
I also admit I don't like the sub AND rmt combined. It does feel like a desperate ripoff.
Still, its close to launch so perhaps in a year if the game is still round i'll try another trial.
Interesting to read peoples opinions of Bill Roper. Note that Cryptic is more similar to Blizzard than Flagship in the sense that of the three only the latter was an independent studio. I'm sure we have all read the detailed post-mortem reports on Hellgate, and the problem of theirs which stands out at the root of all others is that they ran out of money. That is why the game shipped buggy, that is why promised updates never materialized, and that is why the game shutdown quickly. Phrased another way, Bill did a bad job managing the money and that killed the game. Cryptic is owned by Atari, but Bill never managed to get a publisher to back Flagship: that is a big difference.
Two quickies:
(1) Bill Roper is not significantly involved with ST:O, other than some minor advice he claims to toss them occasionally, he does not have a position directly controlling or influencing that game.
(2) Compare and contrast Richard Garriot with Bill Roper, if you care to share your opinion.
Lol, I'm not ragging on you man but CO has launched already back in September. Although I do admit that right now it feels like beta. My personal joke on this is that, in game development, there's Closed Beta, then Open Beta and finally Paid Beta. CO feels like Paid Beta sometimes.
1st poster said it, why the hell would you want Bill Roper to be the face of Cryptic?
Children in my house are taught to spit after saying his name...what kind of unholy fascination with masochism could possess a person to the point they would want Bill Roper to be the public face of their company? It boggles the mind. Truly.
Wow, now does anyone have anything nice to say about CO?
Not one word about PvP and how limited it currently is. This game is finished.
Uhm well, the character creation is very good. The game is not.
"Part of this was caused by the company's own mistakes in Beta. By Roper's own admission, they simply did not gather enough data from their players on the experience curve of the game. They also just didn't let enough people in. "
I would also like to add to this from my own personal experiance of the beta;
"They also didn't bother to listen to the majority of the beta testers comments as to what the problems with the game where."
Anything negative written about the game seemed to be ignored. The feeling that the beta community had was that developers had their own agenda and screw what we thought. Well apart from the "fanboys" that insisted Cryptic could do no wrong to the IP.
Like another poster I really wanted to like this game and have tried all free trials/weekends that have been issued since release but each time the game bores the hell out of me after 10 mins playing.
Based on my CO experience I no longer look forward to the STO release, I have lost all faith in the developers.
So far I haven't found anyone who has.
I do like the game a lot. I dont know what the guy up there is saying about powers. I have no problem with the chars I built blowing away everything and anything 3 levels above me at least. Anyway, cryptic is either understaffed or needs management. CO still can not utililize the new Nvidia drivers. Now there the over 2 month old drivers. Who is running the place and setting the priorities? What are they going to tell everyone with the new machines they get for xmas? Usually first thing dev asks is "do you have the latest drivers installed?". It's gotten embarrasing for them now. Problem solved, blame Nvidia. Good move, instead of creating an alliance with the vehicle driving your product, blame your shit on them. Like I said, Who the hell is running the place? Not who is boss but who is running it.
I think Champions Online is a fantastic game.
If you're sick of games with terribly boring combat systems like Warcraft and Lord of the Rings Online, and you're looking for a game with a very Action Oriented Combat system, then give Champions Online a try.
I have a gunslinger character and she just mows sh&t down with her guns. Two pistols, shotguns, rifles, MISSILE LAUNCHER, grenades.... this character just kills things like crazy. Its really fun to play.
The game's graphics are extremely unique and very attractive.
Its a fun game.
What does it need? More content. But what content it has is really fun.
If you want an Action game... give it a shot, its only 29 dollars to own it.
I think a lot of people have either forgotten or never heard about the really serious and infamous billing fiasco with Hellgate: London, when they started up the monthly subscription system.
About how Bill Roper and his Co. had absolutely NO morale nor any Ethic values when it came to their customers when people saw their whole bank accounts emptied by this horrible error in their billing system! How these affected poor souls had to through hell (how ironic sadly) to get their money back! Some of them gotten into such trouble by it, that they weren't able to pay their bills for that month!
Customer support didn't want to hear about it. Posts of this issue on their forums were instantly deleted and their accounts perma banned! That's right! Their bank accounts emptied and then also not being able to login into the game afterwards, because you tried to bring this issue up in a desperate attempt to get your money back!
People couldn't remove their creditcard info. So they had to go through their Creditcard Company. Have their cards blocked and had to go through great lenghts to get all the transactions rolled back to recoup their money!!
This guy is dangerous and that's why I am still baffled up till this day why in earth Cryptic hired this con artist??! After what he pulled off with his Flagship Studios.
Cheers
CO was off to a good start before this fat douchebag was brought on board. The Alpha version looked promising then it all went down hill. You can thank him for this rip off business model and the lack of content in the game. Expect the same of STO.
Overhype & Offer Lifetime & Abandon & Move on to next project.
Lol, I'm not ragging on you man but CO has launched already back in September. Although I do admit that right now it feels like beta. My personal joke on this is that, in game development, there's Closed Beta, then Open Beta and finally Paid Beta. CO feels like Paid Beta sometimes.
Ya, when I wrote that I started in on a rant about how wrong it is that the products launch so messed up that they've got to be around for a year or so before they become what they should have been at launch and how the industry uses its customer base. But then I erased it cause the subject has been beaten to death.
One thing though that isn't the necessarily the dev/pub's fault though and that is lack of community. I'll admit in CO it feels like its the dev's fault for the design of the game, but realistically even the best made game has no community at launch.
So far I haven't found anyone who has.
I love it, in-game the people playing it are generally having fun and staying positive.
I love it, in-game the people playing it are generally having fun and staying positive.
Yes, I love it, I think it brings a new level of action to the MMO genre.
Roper is like the tip of the iceberg of WoW-cloning. He practically invented the old boring scheme of quests/intances/gearwhoring, he invented "go kill 10 rats'', Hellgate was a game exclusively about farming and grinding stupid quests to get more gear and to get dings.
A fucking shame. Every game he touches will turn into a wow clone.
I hope after this last failure of a clone they understand that (i hope they're reading this)
MMO'S ARE DOOMED TO FAIL IF THEY VAGUELY FEEL LIKE WOW.
I love it, in-game the people playing it are generally having fun and staying positive.
Yes, I love it, I think it brings a new level of action to the MMO genre.
Lol, i've never seen in-game players who criticize the game. If one is against the game he will not be in-game. Your argument fails like WoW with spandex. In-game players are fricking fanboys who refuse reality, especially if they already paid for the game.
I am one of the few who happen to criticize games even inside game-chat. And they say i troll. And obviously i am reverse-trolled by 20 persons simultaneously.
For the rest it's same old story... combat changes slightly, but quests remain the same. Im glad to hear that people are finally realizing how stupid is a game that tells you what to do and where to go, objectives, places, actions, class, gear you can have, everything. I'm glad that people are more and more eager to invent their own activities, without pre-fabricated objectives.
SANDBOX, people.
You used the word "never", and then provided a counterexample to your own statement. What analogy would you use to describe the level of fail for your argument? WoW in spandex? Stillborn fetus? Whether or not someone enjoys a game is their opinion, and cannot be construed as "refusing reality."
Running the beta only twice per week all the way up until OB was a stupid mistake for them to bounce back now and say they didn't get enough data. We asked they open up the servers more days a week, they said no, we told them there were some balance issues with powers and small content gaps, and we told them to push back release a month, but instead they went ahead. The game is fun, for approximately 2 weeks, and then you've pretty much seen just about all there is. 2 meager content updates (if even that) in 3 months? Just not enough to keep most players occupied.
Then again, if you can rehash the same ol' characters in CoH I'm sure there are some that won't mind reserving themselves to some monotony just for the sake of it in CO.
I want to hear more about the RMT, on top of box and subscription cost, I mean other than the industry standard name change, server change one time fees stuff. Introducing endless microtransactions on top of a full subscription fee isn't right. Is that what they're doing? That's what an above post indicated, but I don't know.
yeah, thats what they're doing, but its okay because you don't have to buy the extra costumes, items, and so on. right?
Anyone can look at all the microtransactions that are availible in Champions by going to this link:
http://champions-online.com/store
To summarize: Costume packs (some of which can be unlocked in game), action figures, more char slots, name changes, retcons/respecs. Really nothing to get upset about.
ChampionFan: “To summarize: Costume packs (some of which can be unlocked in game), action figures, more char slots, name changes, retcons/respecs. Really nothing to get upset about.”
Unbelievable how every game has fanboys who serve as apologists for anything and everything.
/facepalm.
Pro business tip. Price your product according to industry standards or customers will know they’re getting ripped off and will go elsewhere.
If you have a product that people don’t know well, a product with a tiny following compared to the competition, don’t charge MORE for what people are suspicious is LESS than what they can find elsewhere.
If CO charges a box fee, AND a full subscription fee, then people are going to treat it like the plague and avoid it if the game also involves microtransactions for retcons/respecs and character slots, which are NOT industry standard for games currently using box and full subscription fees.
Industry standard? It looks like you are uninformed: vanity pets in WoW costs $10/each, whereas in CO they cost $1. Retcons in CO, which allow you to change all your skills, which in this classless game is tantamount to changing your entire class/race, cost $12.50, compare that to the costs and limitations of the corresponding service in WoW. Costume packs are similarly priced to what NCsoft charges in CoX.
Pro forum tip: get informed before speaking.
Why don't you actually look at what they sell on the Cryptic store, and try to argue to me that any of it is over priced compared to industry standards. Then I will show you some outdated pay2play game, from Sony, Blizzard, or NCsoft, that charges more for an equal or worse version of the same service.
Oh, I should clarify that retcons can be earned in game by reaching lvl cap, can be purchased at any time using in game currency, and have been given away to all players at least 3 times since launch, coinciding with major patches. Similarly, 5 costume slots can be unlocked for each character in the game, the C store is for those who want more than 5 costumes.
I agree with anyone who decries such things being availible only for MT in a p2p game: that would be unacceptable. Fortunately, in game respecs are very reasonable: even after hundreds of hours put into the game and over a dozen character, I have never purchased a respec from the C store, and I am not the type who prefers to grind then to pay, I am a working adult and would pay in a heartbeat instead of a 5 hour grind, but CO does not present the choice that way.
Ya, when I wrote that I started in on a rant about how wrong it is that the products launch so messed up that they've got to be around for a year or so before they become what they should have been at launch and how the industry uses its customer base. But then I erased it cause the subject has been beaten to death.
One thing though that isn't the necessarily the dev/pub's fault though and that is lack of community. I'll admit in CO it feels like its the dev's fault for the design of the game, but realistically even the best made game has no community at launch.
Agree with you completely that the trend these days seem to be Paid Beta, where the focus of the developers is simply to meet the budget deadline and not actually to put a worthwhile mmo out there.
Yup, there isn't much community but I think a few days ago, the devs removed the barriers for chat so you can basically chat across all the instances now. So for the time being at least people are now talking to each other.
And to respond to a previous poster on the powers issue. There is a problem with the powers although I don't think it's really the fault of the devs. The problem seems to rest more in the fact that the system CO has implemented is a classless system, meaning that people are free to mix and match. If you apply that to standard class systems, you can easily see what the problem is, e.g. imagine a mage with wizard nukes, warrior tanking abilities, healer spells and rogue dps, and you will see that an imbalance will occur. Frankly, I don't have a clue how CO is going to fix this without coming across as a nut case wildly swinging the nerf bat.
Champions Online has had a series of just absolutely horrible leadership decisions. I don't know if Roper is at fault or not, but:
(1) Only 2 days a week (and for only a few hours each day) closed beta testing.
(2) No stress testing at all during beta. The only thing they did was put some daemons/scripts on. LOL. I remember in the beta forums telling people that the scripts were pointless and having Cryptic fans defend them and saying it was all the stress testing they needed. But guess what happened when open beta started? Yep, it couldn't handle it. And guess what happened with release? Yep. LOLZ
(3) Lifetime subscription offer where they retroactively changed their webpage in an attempt to mislead people. Then their PR rep publicly posted on their forums, "Look, the offer says it is limited by supply and you can see this on our web page." It was only when people pointed to Google caches that they had to fess up.
(4) Absurd holiday event with hour lockouts on zones even though you needed over a dozen of them, leading to camping issues obviously not appropriate for a casual game.
(5) Balance patches upon release and xp changes that made it so they didn't have enough content to let people level.
Really, the list goes on and on. The upper management for CO has been just beyond pathetic.
He also felt the game launched well from a technological point of view..... There were not many, in a broader sense, reports of crashes and other major problems people have come to associate with MMO launches.
.....
While Champions Online didn't shatter sales numbers, Roper believes it has done more than enough to have a very solid future.
Almost certainly related. The major cause of launch crashes/problems is having more players than anticipated. Clearly CO didn't have to worry about that.
And still no indication on what those sales numbers were...
With Jack Emmert's pre-launch statement that he'd be skipping the light fantastic if they netted 100k subscribers and CoH's long history of just over 100k subscribers, I'm guessing it's lower than that, otherwise they'd be crowing about their success.
This concept seems to be beyond Roper.
Hellgate London did the same. Its online component fell so far short of what other MMOs offered and the $10 a month subscription they wanted to charge was outrageous for what they offered in return.
I put that aside as an obvious rip-off.
And now he's at it again, but this time he has a real (if flawed) MMO and is hitting players up for a subscription + microtransactions.
championFan, “Pro forum tip: get informed before speaking”
Industry standards, and getting what you pay for…
Nothing means anything when taken out of context.
Yes, two, and only two, so far, WoW pets cost 10 dollars. It’s disturbing and lame and worrisome that Blizzard went this direction, everybody knows it. Yes, Blizz is making a shameless money grab allowing and charging for race and faction change and all that,
BUT… you take it out of context.
Blizzard waited 5 years, 5, FIVE YEARS, amassing a huge following, while giving people lots of free pets and holiday extras, and a mountain of content. Some people don’t like the game and don’t like Blizzard, but you can’t deny that a lot of people have fun playing , and Blizzard delivered all of that before the RMT pets you mentioned ever appeared.
What Blizzard provided for the money compared to Cryptic and CO are incomparable.
Bill should make a great game that everyone loves and talks about and brings to their friends, BEFORE he and his buddies decide to get into microtransactions.
Blizzard has endless resources Bill didn’t and doesn’t? Smaller developers should have our sympathy and our dollars to support them? I would sympathize except for the horrible experience with Hellgate: London.
If you want to be an automobile manufacturer, that’s great, but you better have the resources to do it. Don’t make a two wheeled piece of garbage in your garage, then call it an SUV and charge me 40,000 dollars for it, trying to convince me to support ‘the little guy’ independent car maker. If your lack of resources lands you with an end product no better than a pile of poo, don’t polish it and lie to my face and call it gold, just don’t. Bill did, with Hellgate: London anyway.
Blizzard can afford to provide more with their large player base you say, whereas poor lil ol’ Bill can’t?
To point out the obvious, WoW started out small. There weren’t that many servers in the first 12 hours of day one, and it wasn’t remotely as evolved as it is today. That huge player base and all that money went to Blizzard because people enjoyed playing it. You might not like that game or the company, you might think WoW players are crazy, but that’s how it worked, it started small.
If you want to look at smaller models, Guild Wars has a much smaller player base and they make a game which lots of people like without charging a subscription.
Lotro has a much smaller player base, but they make a decent game for lower than usual box prices, and it’s easy to get a 10 dollar/month sub rather than 15 for that game.
I don’t care if you like those games or not, they demonstrate you can run an mmorpg frugally without looking to bleed extra dollars out of players here and there with a full court press of let’s say box AND sub AND microtransactions AND in-game advertising for instance. (I assume there’s no in- game advertising in CO like there was in HGL.)
ChampionFan, what matters is that you’re having fun. If you and others are having fun in the game, then that’s great. Gaming costs for you are so small that a little more or less probably doesn’t make much difference. I get that. I wish you and other CO fans all the luck in the world.
Maybe CO is a fun game, who knows, maybe it isn't. People criticize it in this thread, but I don’t know first hand. What I do know is that CO would have done better bringing more people in if they did not begin with all those microtransactions at the very start, and of course, if they didn’t have Bill Roper’s name stamped on it.
I will give kudos to Bill Roper for admitting finally the mistakes they made during beta, or at least the major one, not getting enough info from the testers; i.e.; not listening. The real question now is, since he has admitted fault what are they going to do to correct it? Are they going to actually improve the game or is it really just a diversion tactic still for STO?
I agree with this. A lot. Yet another small loss of credibility for the site, hope the "exclusive" screenshots for ST:O or whatever you got for this will be worth it. Klingon>English dictionaries hopefully? Add this slop to the pile of how, "ungrateful and whiny gamers are" articles you push out.
Also: "...all of these updates were added to the game for free, not exclusively to the Champions Store as some have feared may be the case with all such items."
How much do you think people bitching about the store actually changed this? I know MMORPG.com does nothing but spin spin spin the "new business models" for all of the games featured here but at least pay some lip service to the fact it was as bit more than paranoid rantings for players to think Roper and Co. were out to gouge. They charge for freaking respecs. Stop tripping all over yourself to thank Roper for providing all the free stuff. You want to speculate on something, speculate on the store and how it's not going anything like they planned it too?
Roper, I can not say enough bad things about him.
P.S. I wish this article was brought to us by Dragon Age.
Blizzard waited 5 years, 5, FIVE YEARS, amassing a huge following, while giving people lots of free pets and holiday extras, and a mountain of content. Some people don’t like the game and don’t like Blizzard, but you can’t deny that a lot of people have fun playing , and Blizzard delivered all of that before the RMT pets you mentioned ever appeared.
What Blizzard provided for the money compared to Cryptic and CO are incomparable.
I see your point, and it is a good one. The thing to understand is that CO is very much a spiritual successor to City of Heroes: Cryptic was forced to sell the CoH IP to NCsoft after the Marvel Online deal soured. The engine used in CO is a refined version of the CoH engine. Therefore in a sense Cryptic has already earned their 5 years of good reputation without microtransactions with CoH.
Sure, it's not the same as a sequel, but it is also not the same as coming out of nowhere (or from a failure like Hellgate) and expecting people to pay premium + MT. Similarly, when Blizzard releases its future MMO based on a new IP, they too can spend some reputation points to charge more money, even though that IP will not be 5 years old.
Bill should make a great game that everyone loves and talks about and brings to their friends, BEFORE he and his buddies decide to get into microtransactions.
Yeah, Bill failed to do that personally but the Cryptic team succeded with CoH, and the majority of that team (besides a few who moved to NCsoftto support CoH) is who has brought us CO.
What I do know is that CO would have done better bringing more people in if they did not begin with all those microtransactions at the very start, and of course, if they didn’t have Bill Roper’s name stamped on it.
It does appear that they have lost control of their public relations, I agree, and that is hurting the game a lot in terms of subscription counts.
How much do you think people bitching about the store actually changed this?
I you look at dev statements before launch, not at all: they have always maintained that it would be this way, despite all the slippery slope accusations that have not materialized. Really the slippery slopers should be acknowledging that they were wrong in teir paranoia, not patting themselves on the back thinking that their bitching changed anything.
They charge for freaking respecs.
They offer respecs for sale, but at least 3 free respecs have been given, and in game currency can be used to do partial or full respecs at anytime. Also, keep in mind that a respec allows you to change everything about a character besides their name and sex, so it is tantamount to race/class changes in other games, the difference is that in CO you can buy this with in game currency, and in WoW you must pay with real cash.
You claim the store didn't change at all, it's nice to see such devotion in a corporate entity. It never materialized because they realized how stupid it was and they could not in fact fleece the majority of players, just the devoted ones. I remember a few interviews with your hero (Roper) where they eluded to adding items that actually effected game play. You can dismiss it if you wish but it directly impacted the game's population in the end.
The whole MT thing was a farce they opened a thread on their own forum asking for input and then quietly archived it after it was over five thousand posts with not a single response. Respecs, for sale, period. Regardless if the system is linked to your "class" and your fixation with WoW, the point is they had that in place prior to patching some serious rifts in content and addressing issues that caused players to leave.
Thanks for the interview, because it really proves my point:
Bill Roper: The idea is wanting to be able to have things there that players can get if they want to, but they don’t negatively impact the balance of the game. It’s not like we’re expecting players to go and purchase things through micro-transactions that then give them some huge leg up. All those things I think people get worried about, but really the focus is on having things that are fun, cosmetic or are things that are more account-wide and maintenance based.
World of Warcraft has micro-transactions and people don’t even think about it. Their micro-transactions are fairly steep at times - like $25 to move your character to another realm – and that’s account-wide micro-transactions. WoW also, if you think about it, does micro-transactions through their card games as well, right? It’s an interesting cross-over where it’s a physical product and you’re buying this other game, but that game has cards that can give you effects in-game. And people have gone out and spent a ton of money on that. Granted, they do get a secondary game out of it, but they’re also paying a pretty steep price for that. So they are paying for another game but they kind of have the perks of having in-game items.
The thing is there will be a lot of things we’ll never micro-transact. And one of the things we put out there – less because it’s planned, and more because it’s making sure people understood it – was the fact that if we were to ever put anything out that did have a game effect, there would be a way to earn it. I think that’s really important.
Now that CO has been out for these months, can you dispute anything Roper said above? I don't see anything in conflict with what they have done. Therefore all the paranoid raving in the thread on the CO forums that you mention has not panned out.
On the issue of respecs, by saying "respecs in the store period" I accuse this of being intentionally misleading. Respecs are availible in the store, but they are also quite easy to obtain in game (at launch in-game respecs took a bit of a grind, but that was fixed BEFORE THE C STORE EVEN SOLD RESPECS*). Now the only time you have to grind more than an hour for an in-game respec is on a max-level character, but they also give you a free respec when you reach the level cap. Therefore the C store respec is an option for players that (1) have squandered their free respecs and their earned respec for reaching level cap and (2) have chosen not to earn an in-game respec.
I have a lot of disposable income, and I only get to play 10 hours per week, but with over a dozen characters I have never bought anything from the C store. It consists of either cosmetic stuff that I don't care about or stuff that I can earn in game / get enough of.
*It says a lot about the unimportance of the C store that it did not even sell anything besides vanity pets until several weeks after launch, by which many powergamers had reached max lvl and explored all content, etc.
You ignored every aspect of the quote that said otherwise and focused on him spinning. I am correct for one simple reason, CO was punished for it's greed. Nothing you say or ignore, as the case may be, will change that. Roper said that game effecting items would be included, they are not, he also goes on about how prepared we are for MT stores after a huge initial investment, we were not. As a matter of fact the limit and the scope of the store is nothing like Rock Band, the limit and scope of the store is small. Which in fact supports me saying it CHANGED due to consumer backlash. But it didn't change enough to help CO.
You're not here for discourse, fine, I accept that, hell I expect that, but you have to accept not all of us are willing to suspend believe to the extent you are just because you're a fan. If you believe the interview supports only what you think is to be true and correct, fine. But the fact is your exact quote supports exactly what I was saying all along.
I love discourse, and I may have some bias problems that are getting in the way, but I reread the article and take issue with some of the things that you say are in there:
Irishoak: As a matter of fact the limit and the scope of the store is nothing like Rock Band.
Bill never said it would be. He just said that Rock Band is a great example of precident in the market for an upfront cost + microtransactions, lets roll the exchange:
TTH: Do you think the concept of micro-transactions is something that the western market simply hasn’t completely warmed up to yet?
BR: Actually I think it really has. I think a great example of that is Rock Band. That game is based wholly on micro-transactions and has a really high cost of entry, you know?
Irishoak: he said directly game effecting items would be included
please show me what text you are reading as this, because I read:
TTH: With the items that you’d be able to earn in-game that would also be offered through micro-transactions, will you be giving players any kind of information or description within the store for how they could earn that item if they don’t necessarily want to pay for it?
BR: So the idea with that would be for something that had an in- game effect. Off the top of my head I don’t know that there’s anything like that on the docket, but I think that might be a good idea to do that, or at least have a place for players to find that information pretty easily. But since that hasn’t really been an issue yet that’s not something we’ve looked at.
Please read the underlined phrases [underlined by me of course]. Instead of 'directly saying game effecting items would be included', he says that they didn't have any planned, that it might be a good idea, but that it's not something they had even looked at! The underlined statements are consistent with the C store we have today.
You think he just casually mentioned all these things? Sure he mentioned Rock Band so he could talk about the initial investment and then play down the monthly fee+full game price+ MT model, no one believed they'd assume the exact same business model as them, it was a way to distract from being fleeced. So to be clear, everything said was in an off-handed manner and had no real meaning or context? Heh. We're done.
I'll agree with you one thousand percent, the store is exactly as they envisioned and people protesting it had zero impact on the inclusion of items. Soon CO will reach 11 million subscribers and we all need to embrace the full price for the game, plus a premium monthly subscription rate and learn to enjoy a MT store for all of our expanded content needs. What was I thinking this whole time, I'm gonna go suckle at the teat of Nike until I embrace consumerism. My bad, man. I won't try to think for myself again. Night night.
Suit yourself, by quitting I know you just want to extricate yourself from an argument that you have lost. Sure, you offer the pretense that I have become unsuitable for discourse, but I have proceeded in good faith.
Your problem is that you mix up what BR is saying with the paranoid theories that his statements caused you to have. For example, please support this statement:
Irishoak: he said directly game effecting items would be included
The word "directly" has a very specific meaning. In fact, he directly said they had no plans to offer in-game items, directly contradicting your statement.
Irishoak: So to be clear, everything said was in an off-handed manner and had no real meaning or context?
No, for example BR mentioned Rock Band to answer the question asked by TTH. The question asked by TTH was not about CO, it was about the games industry in general. In your mind, was Bill also talking about CO during that question?
Laughable, at best. Pathetic, most likely. You speak of paranoia when you need to focus on delusion. Good laugh, thanks!
Without quoting specific lines in the above posts, my take on the interview you guys are talking about…
To that interview you guys are talking about…
I don’t know why it’s such a point of contention.
Bill Roper is a horrible front man. It’s mind boggling that Cryptic is using him as such.
His first sentences immediately tell you he’s full of poo.
Bill Roper: Actually I think it really has. [The Western Market has warmed up to microtransactions.] I think a great example of that is Rock Band. That game is based wholly on micro-transactions and has a really high cost of entry, you know?
That start right there is so typical of Bill. He’s already way, way off base.
Mmorpg players don’t even know Rock Band exists, and they don’t care. Nobody in the mmorpg world wants to hear about a Guitar-Hero- on-steroids console game. It’s a different kind of game and different business model.
Bill later on the first page points out that WoW has microtransactions.
One example is the card game, which is an invalid example because it’s a separate game unto itself. The items a person gets for WoW online from TCG are so rare and cosmetic as to be a nonissue.
Another example is character server transfers, which are NOT microtransactions, or at least aren’t lumped into with them usually.
Server transfers are one of those things that a developer can’t allow for free or lots of people would hop around like frogs from server to server looking for whatever floats their boat. A game can’t function well like that. On the other hand developers don’t want to disallow it completely because a tiny minority have compelling reasons to move, like getting onto the same server with rl friends or family. One solution is to charge a fee so only those who really want or need it will do it, while almost everyone else will stay where they are, or role a new character on the new server. Maybe there’s a better solution, but a fee is an ok solution as far as I can see. That is NOT, I repeat NOT at all the same thing as opening a store with lots of microtransactions for cosmetic items and such.
Mind you, I don’t want to convince anyone to like WoW or Blizzard, I’m just saying if you’re going to criticize them, make valid comparisons/contrasts or criticisms.
I’ll say now what I’ve said before and I think matters most and that is, people like Bill Roper should forget about looking at WoW and Rock Band and Club Penguin which make millions of dollars, at least forget about talking about them in interviews, and forget about trying to get ahead with a clever business model.
Bill Roper and his buddies should get ahead by making a great game that people love to play, and everything beyond that will work itself out. That’s it, just make a friggin good game that people love to play and everything else will work itself out.
Good game first, success and money follow.
All the focus on complicating his business model to magically create money out of thin air just doesn’t work.
I don’t want to see interviews about microtransactions added to box and subscription costs. The only good response to the first question of the interview would have been, “Forget the business model, let’s talk about how great the game is.” Instead we get two pages on how Bill Roper plans to get into our wallets. Just unbelievable.